Controlling the Conversation

The word, “socialism” is being declared a conspiracy theorist’s[1] pejorative by the statists, as a way to neutralize its impact. These days if one uses the term, he is to be branded a conspiracy-theorist-extremist. Undoubtedly in need of close attention by the Homeland Security spooks.

It is a firm tenet of the radical statists to control the conversation and the language used in that conversation. If a term cannot be redefined, as the term “liberal” has been, then it is to be demonized. Or, as in the case of “fascism”, the proper use is quickly co-opted for false targeting against the opposition in order to confuse the easily misled. Or creating new terms such as “homophobe” to stigmatize the opposition as bigots, a reversal of a new “morality” focused against the older morality as a means of delegitimizing it in the minds of the easily misled.

Conversations with statists are never about rational discourse. Conversations are designed for agenda control and propaganda dissemination. An example is the furious attacks by the statists on the pre-election use of Obama’s middle name, followed by prideful post-election references to both his name and his Muslim heritage. The conversation depends on the situation.

Moreover, the conversation that says absolutely nothing can be used to mean whatever the easily misled think it means: “Change!” “Yes we can!” These meaningless phrases were coupled with insinuations: the easily misled thought that Obama, a co-black, would pay their mortgages and car payments. What Obama really meant was contained in his early comments on wealth redistribution and in his choice of communist friends and advisors.

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
Sinclair Lewis

Obama came to be king of the world spouting Christianity and waving the flag to attract the middle of the roadsters who can never decide whom to vote for. These are the “useful idiots” (Stalin’s term) who actually think they can determine what a politician will do by listening to his campaign promises, rather than analyzing his life’s history.

In his book, “Rules for Radicals”, (the text taught by Obama during his organizer days), Saul Alinsky addresses the conversation issue early in the text, in a chapter called “A Word About Words”. The words necessary for defining radical power are,

“...loaded with popular opprobrium, and their use results in a conditioned negative emotional response.”

The words, “power, self-interest, compromise, and conflict”, then must be rejected and substitutes and synonyms found. So for “power”, “harnessing the energy” is substituted. Yet Alinsky then proceeds to enumerate the reasons that power is both good and necessary. In fact, it is the organizer's purpose to seize as much power as possible, using whatever means are necessary, without ethical qualm.

Further, Alinsky repeats from time to time the need to consider the possible ethics to be inversely proportional to the importance of an objective (rule #3), and that “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it in moral garments,” (rule #10).

One of the Alinsky / Obama means toward their end, of course, is to control the conversation to the point where other ideas, no matter how rational, are drowned out. (Witness the daily use of televised news conferences and photo ops to constantly dominate the lapdog media). And now much of Obama’s pre-election “fierce moral urgency” has died away into an oblivion unquestioned by the media, as new moral urgencies are declared.

Obama is a fantasy weaver and the fantasy is that of egalitarianism, the dream of the statist left. Despite the natural dichotomy between personal freedom and state control for personal equality, the new American majority just might opt for that easy out, equality, in the hope of pick-up trucks, hot dogs and beer for everyone. The California lesson is being obscured by journalists who blame the state’s failure on obtuse and selfish taxpayers who wish to keep some of their cash; certainly not on the massive governmental entitlement programs or the continuous expansion of government at unsustainable rates. The lesson will have to be applied over and over and will still be unlearned, because the statists want utopia to be; they are nothing if not persistent and focused.

A secular governing power is beholden to no absolute set of ethics or morals. When Obama speaks of “values” he is speaking of his own personal “values du jour”. Spreading the wealth, communist advisors and confidants, and Alinsky as a model, all these indicate socialism or more in the Obama mindset. And that is why the word “socialism” is being demonized; it is a threat to the agenda.

Hayek called socialism “the Road to Serfdom”. We are hurling headlong down that path. And it is not a “theory”[1] if socialism is observed actually happening.

[1] This misused term should actually be “hypothesis”, not theory, but the statists seem not to know the difference.